Increasing Diversity in Technical Education: The Importance of Building Technical Capital

In spite of targeted efforts to expand diversity in the engineering workforce, only marginal improvements have been made in diversifying engineering education.Today, the majority of students who enroll and graduate with a bachelor's degree in engineering are white males.To meet the quantity and quality of engineers the nation needs, we will need to do two things.First, we must "tap all talent" -attract a broad group of individuals who are presently underrepresented in engineering.Second, we must restructure engineering education so that students experience early in their training what engineers do.Because over forty percent of all fouryear engineering graduates began their introductory studies in the community college, prebaccalaureate preparation has drawn close attention.Women, racial/ethnic minorities, and low income students are well represented in community colleges, but only a small number of these populations graduate with associate's degrees in engineering and engineering technologies.Research has shown that an interest in engineering as a career impacts persistence.Yet women and other underrepresented students are less likely than their white male peers to have been socialized to do hands-on activities or encouraged to use toys, tools, or gadgets that might promote their interest in engineering.The research question for this study is: What is the role of problem-oriented pedagogical strategies in increasing the diversity of students in technical education among community college students?In this paper, we argue that success in technology and engineering education requires technical capital, which is experience with "tinkering," manipulating tools, doing hands-on work, and knowing the process of solving problems that require technical solutions.Thus, to increase diversity in technology and engineering education and careers, programs should help students acquire technical capital.To understand how students might acquire technical capital, this study investigated the perspectives of students enrolled in technician level pre-engineering programs that incorporated wellstructured and ill-structured problems at North-West Community College (NWCC).The findings suggest that scaffolding experiences -moving from very well structured problems to ill-structured problems -allow students to acquire technical capital, which can help them succeed in pre-baccalaureate engineering education.